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Four UX industry leaders came to SI tonight to talk about 'What makes an effective UX professional;' the event was put on by Michigan UPA (MUPA), the Michigan/Ohio chapter of CHI (MOCHI), the Student Organization for Computer-Human Interaction at the School of Information (SOCHI), and the School of Information Career Development Office. Each panelist gave an introduction and some tips, and then the panelists took questions from the audience. Following are some liveblogged notes from each panelist's individual talk as well as a summary of the panel discussion.

Today Tyler Bell, Product Manager for the Geo Technologies group at
Yahoo!, spoke at SI on the subject of Geo Informatics (or as the wikipedia entry puts it, geoinformatics.

Talk Description: Location-Aware Applications are all the rage in today's
technology and start-up scene. Yet understanding location and providing
the best user experience entails much more than simply putting dots on a
map. This short talk provides an overview of how Yahoo! tackles
geographic context and entity recognition to connect our users with the
world around them.

Read on for notes from SOCHI attendees!

Next thursday, HCI graduate students at the University of Michigan School of Information will continue their partnership with Mozilla by participating in this fall's Mozilla Labs' University Design Challenge. This challenge asks students to research and design solutions around browsing history: "How can we make sense of this rich source of data and how do we best present this data to the user?"

The School of Information is one of four schools from three countries that is taking part in this challenge, and each school will take a slightly different approach. In our initial event we'll introduce students to the challenge, brainstorm and whiteboard ideas, and share them with one another. Then students will have individually or in small groups take their idea to the next level; this might be a series of mock-ups, a video, or even a prototype.

Over the past year, Mozilla and the U of M School of Information have worked together to put on several design jam sessions; and several SI students have submitted their work to Mozilla for review by other design challenge participants and the Mozilla Labs team. These experiences have benefitted SI students in a few ways: they've gotten valuable supplemental design practice, they've made themselves more visible in the design and open source community, and they've had the very exciting opportunity to work closely with and receive feedback from members of the Mozilla Labs team.

The following students' mockups, prototypes and video examples are available online:

• The TabViz team, which originated in SI's Information Visualization class, won the 'Best in Class' award at Mozilla's 2009 Summer Design Challenge. Props to SI students Jakob Hilden, Liz Blankenship, and Kerry Kao.
• Katie McCurdy submitted a mock-up and prototype to the Spring Design Challenge to communicate her ideas about being able see elements of different websites at the same time.
• Maureen Hanratty and Ian Tadashi Moore submitted a flash animation to last fall's Design Challenge (link forthcoming).

For more information on next week's event and to RSVP, check out the facebook event. And check out older posts on the design jams and challenges SOCHI has held in the past year.

Team TabViz, Jakob Hilden, Liz Blankenship and Kerry Kao, have won the 'Best in Class: Innovation' prize at Mozilla's recent Summer Design Challenge.

The trio began this project as part of their Information Visualization class at the University of Michigan School of Information in 2009. Liz and Jakob have now graduated, and Kerry will soon also complete her M.S. in Information with a specialization in HCI in 2010.

Congratulations to the TabViz team! You make us proud!

Following UX tweeps is a great way to envelop yourself in the UX community, stay on top of trends, and position yourself as an active and interested UX professional. Elizabeth at Luminanze Consulting recently posted a lengthy (though not comprehensive) list of UX professionals' twitter handles and names on the Luminanze blog.

Overwhelmed? Follow some of the names you recognize, and then look at who those people follow. The real gems are those who tend to share a lot of information, normally via links.

This summer, several HCI students have continued SOCHI's history of participation in the Mozilla Labs Concept Series by participating in Mozilla's Summer Design Challenge on reinventing tabs in the browser. Participants from SI included Jacek Spiewla, Malhar Gupta, and the team of Jakob Hilden, Kerry Kao, and Liz Blankenship. You can vote for them from now until July 5th now for the "People's Choice Award".

A few weeks ago, SOCHI held a design jam with TechSmith to explore new ways to organize and share content on Screencast.com. Barb Hernandez, UX Manager at TechSmith, recently wrote a blog post on the Screencast.com blog summarizing the design jam and asking users for feedback regarding our ideas. There are also more pictures posted! Check it out here: http://blog.screencast.com/2009/03/u-of-m-school-of-information-d.html

In our first tech talk of the new year SOCHI invited Dug Song, VP of Engineering for Zattoo, to speak about the local Ann Arbor company's internet TV service. Zattoo's web application allows users to watch live TV via the site's channels on their personal computer. So far they have over 4 million registered users in Europe for their service.

This Friday, SI Career Services hosted a "Speed Networking" event for SI students and alumni. The goal of this event was to gather career information from professionals in the field, such as what skills are necessary for their jobs, and what they look for in potential hires. After attending this event, I can say I came away with a lot of knowledge, and even some interesting, unexpected advice.